The present invention relates to the evaluation of an environmental load over a life cycle of a product, or to an evaluation implementation of the environmental load and an evaluation program of the environmental load.
For considering a product design, it is important to design and develop products which impose less of a load on the environment over their life cycle in addition to the performance and cost of these products. Also, for considering the Earth's environment, it is necessary to aggressively demonstrate the current state of the amount of environmental load caused by products provided to society by the manufacturing industry, their efforts for reduction of environmental load, and the like, as a role which should be played by the manufacturing industry.
LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is an approach for evaluating an environmental load through the life cycle of a product. The “Apparatus for evaluating an environmental load of a product, a method of evaluating an environmental load, and a recording medium storing an environmental load evaluation program” described in JP-A-10-57936 models the life cycle of a product with respect to the environmental loads caused in manufacturing, using, disposal, and recycle stages of a product to facilitate a calculation of an environmental load amount for a product and to output a comparison of environmental load amounts among a plurality of types of products.
In JP-A-10-57936, since no evaluation is made with respect to units of parts which make up a product, materials, or processes, the environmental load cannot be known in units of parts, materials and processes of the product, though the environmental load amount can be calculated and displayed in units of products. For this reason, JP-A-10-57936 fails to extract a difference in the environmental load resulting from the difference in structure among a plurality of types of products.
Also, there is an environmental report, or the like, as means for demonstrating involvement of an enterprise in the environment, but information described in the environmental report about the environmental load has been in most cases partial information such as the result of an environmental load evaluation relating to a representative product. For more clearly demonstrating the involvement of an enterprise in the environment, it is contemplated to produce more effects by presenting environmental load amounts of all manufactured products, and their trends of reduction.
In recent years, mainstream moves, originated from Europe, are afoot to measure and evaluate superiority or inferiority of the involvement in the environment and human right problems among enterprises as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). A transition is now under way into an era in which efforts to match the policy of involvement in the environment with the global standard and to reduce the environmental load lead to a higher added value of enterprises and products developed thereby, other than the pursuit of profit.